The 20 Best Horror Movies From The Past 20 Years, Ranked

20.

Orphan

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Starring: Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Isabelle Fuhrman, CCH Pounder

Distributor: Warner Bros.

Release: July 24, 2009

Rotten Tomatoes: 59% (Critics), 63% (Audience)

Runtime: 2h 3m

Where to Watch: Paramount Plus

Orphan is about a family that adopts an Eastern European child and the chaos that comes from that. At first, it seems like just another movie in a long line of movies just like it: there's a spooky kid doing spooky stuff. But then, there's an 11th hour twist so wild, so utterly bonkers that it'll make you want to watch the whole movie again. The tagline is, "There's something wrong with Esther." And oh God, is there something wrong with Esther.

Biggest Scare: The Twist. Shocking, distasteful, and utterly brilliant.

19.

The Cabin in the Woods

Director: Drew Goddard

Starring: Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz,

Jesse Williams, Sigourney Weaver

Distributor: Lionsgate

Release: April 13, 2012

Rotten Tomatoes: 92% (Critics), 74% (Audience)

Runtime: 1h 35m

Where to Watch: Peacock

A postmodern film, The Cabin in the Woods is a satirical examination of horror tropes. It depicts horror films as Truman Show-esque scenarios, in which teenage victims are lured into a house with hidden cameras and white collar employees operate behind the scenes to create conflict, release monsters, and ultimately kill their targets. It's funny and gross and clever, especially when the teens realize what's happening and break through the fourth wall to find their captors.

Biggest Scare: The climactic "System Purge." Hell breaks loose, quite literally.

18.

It: Pt 1 & Pt. 2

Director: Andy Muschietti

Starring: Jaeden Lieberher, Bill Skarsgård, Sophia Lillis

Distributor: Warner Bros.

Release: September 8, 2017 (Pt 1); September 6, 2019 (Pt 2)

Rotten Tomatoes: 85% (Critics), 84% (Audience); 62% (Critics), 78% (Audience)

Runtime: 2h 15m (Pt 1); 2h 49m (Pt 2)

Where to Watch: Max

We follow the Losers Club (six boys and one girl) as they confront It for the first time, and then again 27 years later when they return to their hometown. These two films, based on Stephen King’s horror novel of the same name, are so much more than "killer clown" movies. They're about the dead-end decay of small-town America and the rot that festers among close-knit communities.

Biggest Scare: The opening sewer grate scene. It's a brutal death, and it sets the movie's tone perfectly.

17.

A Quiet Place

Director: John Krasinski

Starring: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Release: April 6, 2018

Rotten Tomatoes: 96% (Critics), 83% (Audience)

Runtime: 1h 30m

Where to Watch: Paramount Plus

A Quiet Place feels like a backlash to our always online, noisy culture where there's always ambient sounds in the background—usually of a machine or an electronic device whirring away. The movie exists on a post- apocalyptic Earth, where aliens have ravaged the planet. The gimmick is that these aliens track their prey exclusively through noise, which leads to all sorts of creative and tense situations. This movie is ultimately about the resilience of the human spirit as the central family insists on thriving under the worst circumstances.

Biggest Scare: The opening kill. No sound means no sound, kid.

16.

Talk to Me

Director: Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou

Starring: Sophie Wilde, Alexandra Jensen, Joe Bird, Otis Dhanji

Distributor: Maslow Entertainment

Release: July 28, 2023

Rotten Tomatoes: 94% (Critics), 82% (Audience)

Runtime: 1h 35m

Where to Watch: Paramount Plus

It starts off as a dare game a la Bloody Mary. You grab the mummified hand, speak to it, and a dead person possesses your body. But what if you knew the dead person? And what if they ask for your help? This movie isn't flashy, but it's effective, and that's one of the cool things about horror films; they are reliant on camera angles and editing to make them work—no multimillion-dollar budget required. Horror films are equalizers, and the filmmakers' talents shine through.

Biggest Scare: Riley getting tortured by demons. The filmmakers left just enough to the imagination.

15.

Midsommar

Director: Ari Aster

Starring: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, Will Poulter, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren

Distributor: A24

Release: July 3, 2019

Rotten Tomatoes: 83% (Critics), 63% (Audience)

Runtime: 2h 25m

Where to Watch: Max

This horror film occurs in broad daylight, which is uncommon for the genre. Horror typically takes place in darkness; people fear the unknown and the unseeable. Midsommar turns that perception on its head by creating an unsettling juxtaposition between the beautiful, sunny setting and the cult's moral depravity. The daylight also symbolizes that the cult knows exactly what it's doing. These are not brainwashed avatars, possessed by some unholy demon to do Satan's bidding. These are true believers, and that’s the most unsettling aspect about cult leaders and cultist movements.

Biggest Scare: The mallet kill. The screams (from the murderers, not the victim) don't help.

14.

Barbarian

Director: Zach Cregger

Starring: Georgina Campbell, Bill Skarsgård, Justin Long, Matthew Patrick Davis, Richard Brake

Distributor: 20th Century Studios

Release: September 9, 2022

Rotten Tomatoes: 92% (Critics), 71% (Audience)

Runtime: 1h 42m

Where to Watch: Hulu

This is an ambitious film about a woman who is double-booked into a rental home with a man. The more horror movies that you've already watched, the more you'll like this particular one; the film uses tropes to make us think one thing, until the twist reveals that things are actually much, much worse. The horror and cruelty goes back decades. And by the end, we pity the "monster" as much as we fear it.

Biggest Scare: When Mother nurses AJ. The visual dissonance is strong with this one.

13.

Black Swan

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Starring: Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder

Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Release: December 17, 2010

Rotten Tomatoes: 85% (Critics), 84% (Audience)

Runtime: 1h 48m

Where to Watch: Black Swan

Natalie Portman (Closer, Jackie) won an Oscar for this film. Too often, people have a snob's approach to horror; anything that's critically beloved or artistically driven is "too good" to be horror, and people instead classify it as a "thriller." But in every way that matters, Black Swan is a horror film, through-and-through. The monster is inside Nina, a ballerina who corrupts herself and feeds into her darkest emotions to become the lead in the ballet “Swan Lake.” We can see the disaster coming, but both she and we feel powerless to stop it. There’s nothing scarier than the inevitable.

Biggest Scare: All the moments when Nina is peeling her cuticles or picking at her back rash. It's body horror at its finest.

12.

Paranormal Activity 3

Director: Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman

Starring: Chris Smith, Lauren Bittner, Chloe Csengery, Katie Featherston, Jessica Tyler Brown, Sprague Grayden

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Release: October 21, 2011

Rotten Tomatoes: 67% (Critics), 51% (Audience)

Runtime: 1h 21m

Where to Watch: Max

The Paranormal Activity franchise reinvigorated the found-footage genre after The Blair Witch Project innovated the concept in 1999. While the first film features Katie and the second follows her sister Kristi, it’s the third film that takes place 18 years prior with Katie and Kristi as kids living under the same roof that stole our attention and captured our fear. Of all the Paranormal films, the third one has the richest premise, even if it piggybacks on the first and second films to get there. Plus, we learn about the witches' coven that started this madness in the first place, and we love some backstory.

Biggest Scare: The kitchen scene where everything drops from the ceiling. It's such a sharp shift from tranquility to chaos.

11.

The Descent

Director: Neil Marshall

Starring: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid

Distributor: Pathé Distribution

Release: August 4, 2006

Rotten Tomatoes: 87% (Critics), 76% (Audience)

Runtime: 1h 39m

Where to Watch: Fubo

Spelunking is dangerous. You could get stuck in a narrow shaft. A chamber could collapse. You could break a limb and not be able to crawl your way back out. Take all these dangers and add in feral, cannibalistic humanoids, and you get The Descent. Led by an all-female cast, this film's fright factor is enhanced by its suffocating claustrophobia. Our heroes' field of vision is only as far and as wide as their flashlights. And by the time they do see something, it's too close and too late to stop it.

Biggest Scare: The night vision jump scare. It's the first clear shot we get of a crawler, and it's ugly as hell.

10.

The Strangers

Director: Bryan Bertino

Starring: Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman, Gemma Ward, Kip Weeks, Laura Margolis

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Release: May 30, 2008

Rotten Tomatoes: 49% (Critics), 48% (Audience)

Runtime: 1h 25m

Where to Watch: Max

The terrifying thing about the home invasion film The Strangers is the impersonal nature of it all. The killers have no emotional relationship to their prey. They chose their victims as a matter of convenience; it was "just because." It's that randomness—that lack of agency or blame—that makes this film such a massive hit. It's also notable how lopsided the entire confrontation is. The couple never really has a chance at survival, and that creates a mounting sense of dread and inevitability as the film progresses.

Biggest Scare: When he's watching her from inside the house, and she doesn't realize how screwed and how dead she is. Yet.

9.

Let The Right One In

Director: Tomas Alfredson

Starring: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson

Distributor: Sandrew Metronome

Release: October 24, 2008

Rotten Tomatoes: 98% (Critics), 90% (Audience)

Runtime: 1h 54m

Where to Watch: Peacock

Let the Right One In is a coming-of-age story between a centuries-old vampire girl who's frozen at 12 years old and the preteen boy who loves her. Bullied by his classmates, the boy wants to find acceptance. And the girl needs blood—delicious, fresh, scrumptious human blood—and lots of it. The film has a dark, moody atmosphere, and it is made even more horrific thanks to the realistic bloodletting. But you'll be surprised by how sweet and heartfelt the film is between its dismemberments and beheadings.

Biggest Scare: The pool sequence. How awful, and how deserved.

8.

Drag Me to Hell

Director: Sam Raimi

Starring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Release: May 29, 2009

Rotten Tomatoes: 92% (Critics), 62% (Audience)

Runtime: 1h 39m

Where to Watch: Peacock

After directing three Spider-Man movies, horror legend Sam Raimi returned to the genre that made him famous. This movie, about a bank loan officer who denies an old gypsy woman an extension on her mortgage, is a fun romp with a dark-humored reliance on bodily fluids, usually going into people's mouths. It's filled with practical effects instead of CGI, which look really good on screen. And it has a fantastic ending that's a perfect extension of all the mayhem that came prior to it.

Biggest Scare: The opening scene. That poor kid. He deserved none of that.

7.

The Witch

Director: Robert Eggers

Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie

Distributor: A24

Release: February 19, 2016

Rotten Tomatoes: 91% (Critics), 60% (Audience)

Runtime: 1h 32m

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime

This movie is 100 percent atmosphere and buildup. It made a star out of Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen's Gambit, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga), and although it contains some truly horrific scenes, it also features some wonderful, 17th century dialect. We witness the splintering of the family dynamic, and we see hubris and temptation unravel these Puritans as they eventually turn on each other.

Biggest Scare: The baby scene. That flying ointment isn't going to make itself.

6.

Sinister

Director: Scott Derrickson

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Juliet Ryance

Distributor: Lionsgate

Release: October 12, 2012

Rotten Tomatoes: 63% (Critics), 62% (Audience)

Runtime: 1h 49m

Where to Watch: Max

A true crime writer moves his family into an infamous house where an entire family was murdered. Instead of doing the responsible thing, he decides not to tell his family about the house's sordid history. When he explores the attic, he discovers a box of Super 8 film reels. They turn out to be snuff films, and our main character realizes that the family annihilation he's investigating is just one part of a bigger, more horrifying pattern of family killings.

An air of evil and sickness hangs over this film. The sound design is anxiety-provoking. And the faux-snuff films contain some of the creepiest imagery from the past 20 years because of how realistic they look.

Biggest Scare: All the Super 8 reels are horrifying. But "Lawn Work" takes it into unforgivable territory.

5.

Get Out

Director: Jordan Peele

Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Lil Rel Howery

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Release: February 24, 2017

Rotten Tomatoes: 98% (Critics), 86% (Audience)

Runtime: 1h 44m

Where to Watch: Peacock

This is Jordan Peele's feature film debut about a Black man who spends a weekend getaway with his white girlfriend's family. What starts out as a series of awkward remarks and tone-deaf jokes slowly devolves into something more sinister. The movie does a great job of slowly upping the tension; there's no singular event that should tell this man to run away as fast as he can. Instead, the offenses are cumulative, a death by a thousand cuts vibe, and by the time he makes up his mind, he's too late.

Biggest Scare: Georginia's mental breakdown. No, no, no, no, no…

4.

It Follows

Director: David Rovert Mitchell

Starring: Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Olivia Luccardi, Lili Sepe, Daniel Zovatto, Jake Weary

Distributor: RADiUS-TWC

Release: March 27, 2015

Rotten Tomatoes: 95% (Critics), 66% (Audience)

Runtime: 1h 41m

Where to Watch: Peacock

Horror warns against promiscuity. The horny teens in any film are usually the first to die. And It Follows takes this premise to the hilt; it's about a curse that's sexually transmitted. A creepy entity, invisible to everyone but those who are cursed, slowly trudges towards the person. No matter where the individual goes, whether it takes days or months to reach its target, it follows, relentlessly. The dread of the inevitable consumes this film, making it a must-watch for anyone who loves the unsettling vibes of a stalker flick.

Biggest Scare: The "Tall Man" encounter during the home invasion sequence. Jump scares don't compare to something this creepy.

3.

Hereditary

Director: Ari Aster

Starring: Toni Collette, Milly Shapiro, Gabriel Byrne

Distributor: A24

Release: June 8, 2018

Rotten Tomatoes: 90% (Critics), 71% (Audience)

Runtime: 2h 7m

Where to Watch: YouTube Primetime

This entire film feels oppressive. Grief consumes the characters, and less then a third of the way through the film, a shocking event makes everyone even more traumatized and depressed. So be warned: Hereditary is not a 'fun' horror flick. You're in for a pitch-black, harrowing experience. But it feels real in a manner that horror rarely does. And Toni Collette (The Sixth Sense, Little Miss Sunshine) puts on a tour-de-force, self-sacrificing performance to make that possible.

Biggest Scare: The aftermath of the car accident, especially the delayed reaction to discovering it. That scream.

2.

The Babadook

Director: Jennifer Kent

Starring: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman

Distributor: Umbrella Entertainment

Release: November 28, 2014

Rotten Tomatoes: 98% (Critics), 72% (Audience)

Runtime: 1h 33m

Where to Watch: Netflix

A widowed mother and her six-year-old son read a completely age-inappropriate pop-up book together. But afterwards, the mother has nightmares about hurting her son. A sad exploration of grief and its damaging impact, The Babadook proposes something frightening but true to life. Sometimes the monster can't be defeated. Sometimes, the best you can hope for is to control it.

Biggest Scare: The pop-up book itself. Inside Editions printed 6,200 copies of Mister Babadook, which makes them extremely rare. Check on eBay, where you'll be lucky to snag one for under $2000.

1.

Train to Busan

Director: Yeon Sang-ho

Starring: Gong Yoo, Jung Yu-mi, Ma Dong-seok, Kim Su-an

Distributor: Next Entertainment World

Release: July 22, 2016

Rotten Tomatoes: 95% (Critics), 89% (Audience)

Runtime: 1h 58m

Where to Watch: Peacock

Have you ever cried over a horror film? Korean horror masterpiece Train to Busan earns its audience's tears by depicting characters who are three-dimensional. Money hungry, consumed by his work, and neglectful of his family—especially his estranged daughter—our main character is deeply flawed. But by the end of the movie, you're rooting for this man to succeed, to redeem himself. And did I mention that this is a zombie film? Because the zombie action is top tier—some of the finest put to film, actually.

Biggest Scare: The entire train station sequence. These are not the plodding zombies of old. These zombies are fast, and you need to run faster or become the undead’s latest feast. How unnerving.